Pop Culture Diary: This Week's Reviews, Reads and Roundups

What I've Been Into...

"Wuthering Heights" (2026) I guess this is "sexy" under Trump. A wealthy woman loves but can't have a guy who treats another woman, literally, like a dog. And the reason they're not together is the fault of "the help," an immigrant nanny. Nothing to do with their own selfishness and cluelessness. How romantic!

Watching, I wasn't sure whether the makers of the film were in on the joke or the punchline. In either case, what a stupid movie.

But the dumbest thing about it is the waste of a talented cast: Margot Robbie, Jacob Elordi and Hong Chau. All deserve better, but all also should've known better.

If I need a Bronte adaptation, I'll stick with Kate Bush, who much more than this film, captured director Emerald Fennell's intent to "recreate the feeling of a teenage girl reading this book for the first time.

The Style Council - Café Bleu - Special Edition (2026) Probably way more variants of "You're the Best Thing," "Long Hot Summer" or "My Ever Changing Moods" than I, or likely anyone, needs to hear, but I enjoyed streaming my way through this box set celebration of the first Style Council LP.

Listening reminded me of what an impact this stuff had on me back in 1984. I was around 18 at the time, steeped in Beatles, Kinks, Who, Clash, Specials, Madness and the English Beat, but also getting into Miles, Trane, Sonny Rollins, Monk, and dipping my feet into classic soul.

So a band that melded pretty much all of the above, which the Style Council did (or tried to do), hit the spot.

Long origin story quick: Back in Year Zero, Paul Weller was a contrary cuss of a teenager who nearly single-handedly kicked off a Mod revival in the Time of Punk with his trio, the Jam. Once the group got enormously big and incredibly good, Weller, still contrary, broke it up. He took some time off, grew out his hair a bit, bought even snazzier clothes and found his Denny Laine in Mick Talbot, a killer keyboardist who knew his way around a Hammond B-3.

The Style Council otherwise featured a changing lineup of backing musicians and vocalists (including Dee C. Lee, who later married [and divorced] Weller, and future Everything But the Girl duo Tracy Thorn and Ben Watt), and they recorded some great stuff that holds up well, and a lot of stuff that doesn't so much.

Along with the three tunes I mentioned above, standouts from this set include the exuberant "Headstart for Happiness," the soulful "Speak Like a Child" and Talbot's groovy instrumental, "Mick's Groove."

The box also includes 12"-inch mixes of numerous tunes, which offer way too much of a good thing, along with some cool demos and BBC tracks. Not sure I need to actually own it all in physical form (I still have my LPs), but if I was feeling flush and nostalgic, maybe so.

Sunday Reading

Via Literary Hub: Captain America, Our First Antifascist Superhero:

Jack Kirby described how the Timely office regularly received anonymous death threats against its staff because of Captain America’s anti-fascist content. One Nazi sympathizer buzzed threats through the intercom. Kirby said he rushed down to the lobby to confront him, but the man was gone. The story itself is emblematic of the real risks the early Marvel creators faced by introducing Captain America at such a politically charged and divided time. Things got so bad that the mayor of New York City, Fiorello La Guardia, gave Simon and Kirby police protection. Once the USA entered the war, Simon, Kirby, Burgos, and many other Marvel artists enlisted and went on to see combat. Not all heroes wear capes.

Captain America would develop from WWII anti-Nazi fighter to the leader of the Avengers. With his round American star shield, he epitomizes the archetype of the protector. Steve Rogers grows up in Brooklyn as a puny but resolute child. He stands up to bullies but does not have the physical strength or stature to defeat them. When World War II begins, he is determined to join the US Army despite successive medical rejections. Then he agrees to be injected with the superserum and is transformed into a much stronger, more athletic version of his former self. From then on, both in the comics and the later movies, Captain America stood as a symbol of American ethical behavior, even if sometimes that role edged the character toward the Greek philosopher Aristotle’s warning in his famous treatise on drama, Poetics, that a character should possess a mixture of both virtues and flaws.

Despite what Aristotle says, there are times we have needed Captain America’s ethical certainty and inherent goodness. A poignant reminder of this occurred in the 2012 movie The Avengers. Loki, the brother of Thor, has crashed a high society party in Germany. After a bold show of violent domination, he forces the fleeing guests to kneel before him. He tells them that this is their natural state and that he will be their ruler. But one elderly man resists Loki and refuses. Although not explicit, the implication is that he is a Holocaust survivor. Loki responds by aiming his mace to obliterate the old man, ready to snuff out his act of defiance. He fires—and the blast is suddenly deflected by Captain America’s Vibranium shield. Steve Rogers has arrived in the nick of time. He tells Loki that he’s seen this kind of thing before in Germany. Here is the defender in action, protecting humanity against harm, while reminding us of Marvel’s own genesis in the bold stories of its Nazi-busting heroes.